The police and the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Tuesday removed temporary shelters and stacked up materials from a stretch of pavement along CR Avenue, while hawkers were back on roads in New Market.

Police and KMC officials said Tuesday’s “anti-encroachment drive” on the pavement outside Yogajog Bhavan on CR Avenue was a part of regular drives across the city.

Eight persons who had set up shelters on the pavement were picked up in police vehicles and taken to a KMC-run shelter for the homeless at Latafat Hussain Road in Beleghata.

“We have several shelters for the homeless. There are over 900 beds in these shelters, which means as many adults can be accommodated in these shelters. Over 100 beds are lying vacant,” said the official.

The official said in his experience many of the evicted people refuse to stay in the shelters and leave those.

Street dwellers in Ballygunge, where a similar anti-encroachment drive was conducted, had earlier told this newspaper that their livelihood as waste pickers or domestic helps revolves around the area where they live and if the government offered them a shelter several kilometers away, it was not possible for them to shift.

An officer of Bowbazar police station told Metro that besides the hutments, several small pieces of wood, plastic sheets and some garments were seized from the stretch.

“The entry and exit to Yogayog Bhavan on Chittaranjan Avenue (the regional headquarters of India Post) had shrunk because of the people encroaching the footpath,” said the officer.

A civic body official said India Post had written to both the KMC and the police, requesting that the stretch of the footpath be cleared. “The drive was conducted after we received a request from India Post,” said the official.

The cleared pavement also meant that pedestrians could now walk on the footpath instead of coming down on the busy CR Avenue.

While the police and KMC cleared the footpath along CR Avenue, New Market presented a different story. Hawkers had again set up stalls on the road, violating rules framed by the state government.

A walk through New Market on Tuesday afternoon showed that several stalls had been set up on Bertram Street and a few on Humayun Place.

The street vending rules framed by the state government and notified in 2018 prohibited hawkers from setting up stalls on roads. The rules said hawkers can set up stalls within one-third of the width of a pavement. The rest of the sidewalk has to be kept free for pedestrians. It also barred hawkers from using tarpaulins or flammable substances in the stalls.

Recently, feuds over setting up stalls on the roads have led to clashes between hawkers.